Brothers' Fight
by sonicfan1990
Summary: When Sonic and Tails argue, an accidental slip causes a strain in their relationship. Now with Eggman attacking Station Square, can Sonic and Knuckles save the day without their genius friend to back them up? Things get more complicated when Sonic and Knuckles fall into a trap set by the mad doctor. Can they survive the day? Read and find out. Rated T for the use of guns.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my imagination.

This story is a new experiment for me. Please give me feedback and reviews. Constructive feedback is always welcome. Thank you all.

Chapter 1: The Fight

Deep within the forest of the Mystic Ruins, a maze-like rainforest that few dared to enter, stood the workshop of Miles "Tails" Prower, Sonic's genius best friend and partner in the quest against evil. The workshop was also one of the fox's numerous houses around the world. It was always peaceful and tranquil in the small, cozy place, and today was just the same as always…

"Sonic! You…you…big idiot!"

Or not…

"What did you call me, Miles?" yelled Sonic as he crossed his arms and stared down at his (best) friend, Tails.

"I know you heard me the first time," Tails retorted as he entered a staring contest against the blue blur, "but in case you didn't, I'll repeat. Tails took a really deep breath before he shouted at the top of his lung, "Sonic, you big idiot!"

After that, both the fox and the hedgehog engaged in a heated fight (not the physical kind) that broke the usual silence that the Mystic Ruin was known for. The fight was so intense that nobody would dare to interfere. However, there was an unfortunate victim witnessing the brothers exchange verbal insults in the form of a red echidna called Knuckles, the sole guardian of the Master Emerald on Angel Island.

The poor echidna had picked the wrong time to take a break from his guardian's duty, and was now caught in the middle of a battle he didn't wish to get involved. All the yelling from both parties involved was eating away at the echidna's (nearly non-existent) patience.

When the guardian couldn't take it anymore, he punched the closest thing to him, which was Tails' TV, smashing it to pieces. Despite the collateral damage, his blow achieved the desirable effect of halting the fight. At this moment, Tails and Sonic both turned to look at the angry guardian before them in bewilderment.

"Um…Knuckles" said Tails weakly as he pointed at what was left of his TV.

At this point, the echidna realized what he had destroyed and smiled sheepishly at the fox, "Sorry, I'll pay for it later…if I can find money." The moment of remorse didn't last long, however, as the echidna got back to the matter at hand.

"So, can anybody please tell me what the heck is going on in here?"

"Beside you using Tails' TV as a punching bag?" asked Sonic sarcastically.

"My patience is running thin, hedgehog, just answer the question!"

"Didn't know you had patience, knucklehead."

Another punch was thrown, this time aimed at Sonic. Fortunately, the speedster managed to dodge the certain knock-out blow of the enraged echidna. The workshop's floor, on the other hand…

"And there goes the floor," said Tails as he shook his head and sighed in resignation, "Why didn't I agree to buy property insurance for my house?"

Knuckles tried to calm down. The last thing he wanted was to start another fight, which might actually lead to a serious and brutal brawl with Sonic. He breathed deeply and regained his composure.

"So, tell me, what were you two fighting about?"

Memories quickly flooded back to Sonic and Tails as they resumed their bickering. Knuckled sighed in resignation and put his head in his hand, "Make friends they say, it'll be fun they say…For the love of Chaos, SHUT UP!" Knuckles shouted with a voice so loud that it visibly made the fortress-like workshop shake. The two heroes stopped immediately and looked at Knuckles once more.

"So? Is anybody going to spill it?" asked knuckles as he tapped his foot rapidly on the floor.

"Why don't you ask Mr. Hero over there?" said Tails as he glared at his speedy blue buddy, a gesture which Knuckles followed. "Why aren't I surprised?" thought the annoyed echidna as he looked at the troublemaker known as Sonic.

"Hey, I said I was sorry, didn't I?" Sonic glared back at Tails, "In my defense, I didn't know it was your latest invention. I thought it was just a regular Frisbee, so I took it out and played with it for a while. I got a little carried away and accidently smashed it."

"Firstly, it's not a Frisbee. It's a compact storing device that I've been working on for nearly TWO months. By pushing the button in the middle of the device, it can create a pocket dimension to store everything need for our adventures, including the Tornado. Secondly, what kind of Frisbee is made of metal and has circuits running around it?"

Tails was practically yelling in Sonic's face. It was understandable, though. Two months of research and hard work was lost in a Sonic second. Much as Tails respected and loved Sonic, he couldn't stand the hedgehog's antics sometimes.

"Well, I said I was sorry. Besides, it was partly your fault for not putting it in a more discreet location anyway." said Sonic as he tried to come up with a defense of his own.

"So now it's my fault?" said Tails angrily, "Sonic, you don't just walk into somebody house and take their things without asking for their permission first."

"Sorry, but last time I checked, this is OUR house, so I can walk right in without your permission, Tails."

"ARGH! Sonic, why are you acting like such a jerk?" Tails yelled indignantly.

Sonic could stand anyone calling him a jerk, including Eggman, but he wouldn't take it from Tails, whom he had taken in a few years ago. At this point, the blue hedgehog had grown really annoyed, and he opened his mouth to retort back, but it came out the way he wished he had never opened his mouth at all.

"Me? A jerk? I said I was sorry already. Why are you acting like such a spoiled brat, you little fre…" Sonic quickly slapped his hand over his mouth quickly to stop his slip of tongue. In his mind, he hoped that Tails hadn't heard the last word.

Unfortunately for Sonic, Tails had heard that word, and the fox's eyes were filled with tears seconds later. The blue hedgehog looked at the crying fox's sapphire eyes in regret. In those blue orbs, he could clearly see hurt, shock, confusion, fear, and worst of all, betrayal.

"No Tails, I…I didn't mean it, I…" muttered Sonic as he realized what kind of damage he had caused.

"I…I…thought you were…different than…them…Sonic…" was all Tails managed to stutter between sobs before he disappeared upstairs to his room in a flash a yellow, letting his tears fall behind him as he ran.

"Wait, Tails, come back." Sonic yelled after his best friend, but his words fell on deaf ears, just like that fateful day on Westside Island so many years ago. Knuckles watched Tails run as fast as he could to his room with wide eyes. He didn't understand what had triggered such a reaction from the normally cheerful and composed fox.

At this point, Sonic fell to his knees and looked at the floor. Knuckles noticed the blue hedgehog looked really pale for some reason. He put his hand on the cobalt hedgehog's shoulder and shook him gently.

"Sonic? What's wrong with you? Get a grip."

"I…didn't…mean it, Tails, I'm…sorry…" was all the normally chatty hedgehog muttered, which left Knuckled even more perplexed. He wanted to find out what had happened to his comrades, and he wanted some answers right now.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you for your wonderful reviews and corrections (I really need those, for English is my second language). After reading the first chapter again, I actually found some mistakes caused by oversight. I don't have the habit of rechecking my work anyway. *chuckle* **

**Anyway, I just want to tell you something about my story.  
**

**At the end of this chapter, the story will be split into two separate adventures. One will be about Sonic and Knuckles, the other will be about Tails.**

**I'll focus on finishing Sonic and Knuckles' side of the story first, so don't be too disappointed if you don't see your adorable two-tailed fox in action. He'll have his moments in a separate story after this one. Enjoy. **

Chapter 2: Trouble

After Tails had disappeared to his room, Knuckles tried to coax the despondent hedgehog into telling him exactly what had happened. After many failed attempts (and a lot of death threats) from the rash guardian, Sonic finally managed to find his voice back.

"I didn't mean to call him that…It was just a slip, but it was still my fault…"

"What exactly did you call him?" asked Knuckles in a gentle tone, unlike the grumpy tone he normally used. Sonic would have made a witty remark about it if he hadn't been feeling like crap for the way he had treated Tails.

"I called him a fre…freak." Sonic nearly choked at that word. "It's the one word that must never be spoken in his presence." Sonic trembled as he spoke, still blaming himself for the unfortunate slip.

"Why's that?"

"Tails…He's scarred."

"I have never seen any scar on his body?"

"Not physically scarred. Well, he used to be, but that's all in the past. He's scarred emotionally by that word. He may look like a cheerful kid now, but when I first found him, he was a scared and lonely boy that everybody hated, because of his tails. He was always beaten on a daily basis, Knuckles, and his tormentors always called him a…with that stupid word and worse."

Sonic stopped for a while and took a really deep breath and continued. "I promised never to let anyone call him that ever again, but I ended up betraying his trust because of my own stupidity." Sonic slammed his fist on the floor, effectively messing it up even further.

Knuckles was not used to seeing his blue rival in such an emotional pain. He tried to come up with ways to cheer Sonic up, "Technically, you didn't call him a…like that. You stopped yourself, did you not?"

"What's the difference? Yes, I stopped myself, but the damage has already been done. Didn't you see the way Tails reacted? What if he hates me for life because of this? What am I supposed to do then? I…I don't want to lose his trust. He's the closest thing to a family to me." Sonic said with a really depressed tone, one that Knuckles had never heard before.

"Why don't we go to his room and see if you can talk to him?" suggested Knuckles.

Sonic thought for a moment. He did not want to face Tails right now due to his shame. He couldn't imagine how the fox would react if he walked into that room. However, Sonic decided that it was best to at least try to apologize for his mistake. Besides, Knuckles was with him, so things couldn't possibly get out of control, right?

The blue blur thought for a really long time until he decided to heed the echidna's words and went upstairs. However, he walked behind Knuckles the entire way, still unsure about what to say when he came face to face with Tails. Knuckles noticed, but he was in no mood to give pep talk, so he just kept on walking.

After what seemed like an eternity, they finally reached Tails' room. Knuckles practically shoved Sonic forward to the door and prompted him to knock. After a while, Sonic did so softly, like he wasn't even trying. Knuckles was getting irritated now. After watching the hedgehog knock like he was afraid of hurting Tails' door, he finally stepped in and knocked himself.

"Tails, I know you're in there, open up!" commanded Knuckles, but he at least tried to lower his voice.

However, there was no reaction or anything that showed that the fox had heard him. Knuckles knocked again, and still no reaction. He tried looking into the room through the keyhole and saw the little fox in question all curled up in bed, seemingly asleep. Sonic did the same and was relieved that his best friend was at least still inside the workshop.

Even though the keyhole was small, Sonic could still see that some pillows and blankets were wet, obviously drenched by the kid's tears. The hedgehog felt really bad, even worse than before. Because of one stupid word, he made his best friend cry himself to sleep. Sonic sighed in defeat and walked downstairs, dragging Knuckles with him.

Once downstairs, Sonic slumped into the couch and sat there with a blank expression on his face. Knuckles really couldn't stand seeing his comrade like this, so he decided to strike up a conversation to get the hedgehog's mind off of the topic.

"So…lovely weather today, isn't it?" was the best the guardian could come up with.

This warranted a reaction from Sonic, but it wasn't the one the echidna had hoped for. Sonic looked at him and narrowed his eyes, looking like he was really ticked off.

"What?" shouted Knuckles, "I'm just trying to have a conversation here."

"Correct opening line. Bad timing, knucklehead. At least try to read the mood, dood." remarked Sonic.

"Well, you need to do something to get your mind off of this incident for a while. Go out and run or anything to clear your head and come back here to talk to Tails when he wakes up." Knuckles huffed.

Sonic was about to open his mouth to say something, but he was stopped when the door to the workshop sprung open and revealed a pink hedgehog trying to catch her breath.

"Amy? What do you want now?" said Sonic, not even bothering to act polite. The last thing he wanted right now was to suffer the fan girl hedgehog's crazy obsession.

"Nice to see you too, Sonic." said Amy sarcastically as she closed the door and walked to Sonic and Knuckles. "I'm just here to tell you that Eggman is attacking Station Square again. Where have you been, Sonic? It's all over the news."

"Does it look like we still have the TV standing there?" Sonic asked as he pointed at the spot where Tails' TV had once stood, then pointed his thumb at Knuckles, "Ask him for more details on what happened?"

"Never mind, the important thing now is that we have to stop Eggman from destroying the city. Who knows what he's planning. We've got to go, now!" At this point, Amy looked around the room and noticed that her foxy friend wasn't present.

"Umm, where's Tails?" asked Amy innocently.

At this question, both the hedgehog and the echidna flinched visibly and looked at each other. Amy was a little surprised, but when she was about to ask, Sonic beat her to it.

"He…is not well at the moment." Sonic lied, although there was some truth in his words, "Just let him rest for now. We have a bad egg to scramble. Let's go!" With that, Sonic sprinted out of the couch and sped off toward Station Square, dragging Amy and Knuckles with him. He knew that if Amy found out that Tails had been crying, she would bombard him with difficult questions to no end. The pink hedgehog was somewhat protective of the two-tailed fox for some reason.

…

After Sonic, Amy and Knuckles had left the workshop, a creaking sound came from upstairs…

**That's it for this chapter, please review and tell me what you think. Your reviews are highly appreciated. **


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry for the late update, everyone. It's been a hectic week for me with part time job and homework, but I'm back in action.**

**Speaking of action, the story is going to have quite a lot of that from here on out. I really tried my best to make the battles interesting, so I sincerely hope that you will enjoy them. Thank you for your time and patience. **

Chapter 3: Trap

Sonic, Knuckles and Amy arrived at Station Square a few minutes later. Once there, Sonic let go of his companions' hands.

"Alright, Eggman is at the city hall in the middle of Station Square, you need to get there and put a stop to whatever he's up to." said Amy.

"Consider it done. Amy, you go and help everybody evacuate to safety. Knux and I will take care of Egghead."

Amy simple nodded and sped off with her trusted hammer in hand, ready to smash any unfortunate robots that happened to cross her. Sonic and Knuckles headed toward the central part of the city.

* * *

As they were about halfway to the city hall, the duo were stopped by a giant robot, whose shape (you guessed it) looked like an oversized ostrich's egg. The robot was somewhat impressive and menacing, with big horns on his head, armor plates around its body and huge spikes in places where the hands should have been. Without warning, the killer robot extended its arms and aimed its deadly spikes at Sonic and Knuckles, who effortlessly dodged.

Sonic swiftly unleashed his trademark spin dash at the robot. Much to the hedgehog's dismay, however, his attack didn't even leave a dent on the robot. Due to the sheer size of the thing, Sonic couldn't really hit it anywhere else other than its legs, which were heavily armored. The robot simply locked on to its targets and launched another deadly punch, this time faster and more powerful than the last.

However, Sonic and Knuckles still managed to evade the blow with little effort.

"Alright, change of plan Knux," said Sonic to his echidna comrade, "I'll try to find a way to bring that hunk of junk down and you'll deliver the knockout blow." Knuckles simply nodded in agreement, knowing full well that the opponent before them was one neither hero could take on alone. Eggman finally made something that could almost be considered a threat to Sonic and Knuckles. Well, almost.

Sonic ran around the robot in circle to distract it while Knuckles burrowed underground, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. After a series of failed attempts on the hedgehog's life, the robot unloaded its arsenal of homing missiles at Sonic. Being aimed at by more than forty homing missiles would have been a scary experience for a normal being, but Sonic was far from normal. In fact, the hedgehog smirked in delight as an idea came into his head.

Being the thrill seeker he was, Sonic dashed in the middle of the incoming missiles. Some were prematurely detonated from colliding with other missiles while the remaining ones continued to pursue their target. Sonic used that to his advantage. He led the missiles right at the shooter and made them hit the robot's legs, effectively destroying all of the armor plates protecting them and making the killer bot lose balance.

Seizing his chance, Sonic waited until the last missile had hit the robot and attacked with another spin dash. Thanks to the loss of the armor plates, Sonic's attack connected and destroyed one of the bot's legs.

The big robot bent down and stuck its spikes on the ground. At this moment, Knuckles came out from a spot directly under the robot and unleashed an extremely powerful uppercut to its body, knocking it backward and making it fall flat on its back.

Not wasting the opportunity, Sonic ran to Knuckles' size and told the powerhouse echidna to throw him at the robot's head, having noticed that it was the only place that was not as heavily protected as the rest of the robot's body.

The echidna nodded and threw Sonic in the air. After that, Knuckles jumped up and used his glide ability to stay afloat while waiting for Sonic to fall down. Once the hedgehog was in place, Knuckles punched the spin-dashing ball and shot Sonic right at the fallen robot's head, destroying it in an instant. Without the head, the robot was just another oversized hunk of junk lying on the ground.

Sonic quickly uncurled himself, stood up and dusted himself off. Knuckles soon joined the hedgehog's side.

"Now that's a headshot. Nice aim, Knux." said Sonic.

"It's not over yet, hedgehog, now let's move. We've wasted too much time here already." After a nod from Sonic, the duo left the scene and continued to make their way to the central part of the city.

* * *

They easily made short work of Eggman's forces, mostly consisted of the Egg Pawns series, along their path. With Knuckles' unparalleled strength and Sonic's lightning-quick reflexes, they knocked down anything robotic along the way.

Soon, they reached their destination, and found the cause of all this chaos in the middle of a clear space waiting for them.

"Eggman!" yelled Sonic and Knuckles in unison as they faced the mad doctor himself.

"Well, I see you've finally made it, you pesky pests. Hang on…where's your two-tailed freak of a sidekick?" Eggman taunted with a smirk on his face.

At that remark, Sonic snapped uncharacteristically, "Don't you dare call him that, Egghead! Tails is not a freak, you hear me." Both Eggman and Knuckles were slightly taken aback by Sonic's outburst. He had never shouted before, not even at Eggman (most of the time). However, the mad scientist shrugged it off and continued on with his taunts.

"Never mind then, I don't care where that pest is, one less trouble to worry about. Now then, I bet you're wondering why I'm tearing the city apart, hmm."

"What are you planning this time, Eggman?" Knuckles shouted, trying to intimidate the doctor, but his effort did little to impress the scientist, much less intimidate him.

"Oh, nothing much. I just figured that if I terrorize the city, you'll show up and try to stop me, and I'll have you right where I want." Eggman laughed and pushed a button on his Eggmobile. As soon as he hit the button, Sonic and Knuckles were caught in a tractor beam, suspending them in mid-air.

"Gotcha, rodent, Ho ho ho ho…" said Eggman smugly as he looked at the success of his plan. He pulled out a remote and pressed a button on it. The sky suddenly became dark. To be more precise, The view of the sky was replaced by that of a giant floating fortress with Eggman's insignia on it. The fortress had been in camouflage mode the entire time, waiting for Sonic and Knuckles to fall in position.

Now the heroes realized it was just an elaborate trap by Eggman to lure them to this specific location. The fortress' tractor beam pulled Sonic and Knuckles in.

"You're not going to get away with this, Eggman." Sonic yelled at the top of his lung at his nemesis, who simply looked at him with a smirk on his face.

"Oh, but I already have, rodent."

With that, Eggman piloted his Eggmobile back to his fortress' control room. Once there, he increased the power of the tractor beam, knocking out the trapped heroes and pulled them inside the floating prison.

…

On top of a building nearby, a figure stood witness to everything that had transpired. That person stood there looking at the sky for a little while longer before leaving the site…

**Stay tuned, everyone, for next time. **


	4. Chapter 4

**Finally, it's weekend. Now I have some time to work on my story and escape reality for a little while. Here's the fourth chapter. Enjoy everyone. **

Chapter 4: Prison

Sonic opened his eyes a while later and slowly sat up. He remembered being hit by some sort of tractor beam and getting pulled into a strange flying fortress. The cobalt hero shook his head to clear his blurry vision and quickly scanned his surrounding. Darkness was all that he could see.

Sonic squinted his eyes and looked harder, and he found Knuckles lying next to him. The hedgehog shook his red friend vigorously in an attempt to wake him up.

"Hey, Knuckles, wake up!"

The red echidna groaned and slowly opened his eyes. After sitting up fully, he looked at the surroundings and saw they were in some dark place with little lighting.

"What is this place?" asked Knuckles in confusion.

"Eggman kidnapped us, remember? We're probably inside his flying castle thingy."

"Can't believe we fell for that stupid trick."

"Yeah, now I know how you must feel like when you fall for Eggman's usual brand of stupid." said the hedgehog jokingly.

"If my brain weren't doing a rollercoaster ride in my head right now, I would beat the snot out of you, Sonic."

"You have a brain?" asked Sonic sarcastically.

"Tread carefully, hedgehog. You're really testing my patience here." threatened the irritated guardian.

"I don't tread, I jet."

Knuckles once again growled in annoyance. He really couldn't decide which was worse: being stuck inside Eggman's airborne base or being stuck in Eggman's airborne base WITH Sonic. The red guardian stood up and dusted himself off. He tried to locate a wall. Maybe he could punch a hole and escape through it. He quickly found the thing he was looking for, but as soon as his spiked knuckle made contact, the echidna cried out in pain.

The wall was extremely hard, too hard for him even. Knuckles grabbed his hand and blew on it rapidly like doing so would magically make the pain go away. Once the pain had somewhat disappeared, the echidna tried again…and again…and again to no avail.

Sonic actually found Knuckles' situation quite hilarious and chuckled to himself. He knew that if Eggman had had the gall to kidnap the powerhouse member of the team, he would have made sure that the prison could withstand the guardian's devastating blows, but he wasn't going to tell his companion that bit of info just for the fun of watching him try. After a series a punches, Knuckles gave up, finally realizing that even he could not break this wall. He walked back to where Sonic was sitting and sat down.

Knuckles began to blow on his knuckles like before. However, when the guardian noticed the grin on the cobalt hedgehog's face, he frowned and pointed his index finger at the hedgehog, "Not. One. Word."

Sonic drew his thumb and forefinger across his lips and acted like he threw away the key, but, in fact, he could barely contain the urge to laugh at the red echidna's face when he said that.

All of the sudden, the light lit up and made the darkness go away. Both Sonic and Knuckles were momentarily blinded by the bright light until their eyes adjusted. They looked around at the newly lit room and found that they were in a containment cell of some sort. A big computer screen lowered down and revealed Eggman's smirking face.

"Welcome aboard my glorious Egg Citadel, Sonic…and Knuckles. Tell me, how was your little nap?"

"Would have been much more comfortable with some mattresses and blankets, thank you very much." said Sonic sarcastically, "I'm giving this hotel a one out of ten."

Knuckles just shook his head at Sonic's antics and stared at the mad scientist, "What do you want with us, Eggman?"

"I'm so glad you ask, Knuckles. I only want to get you out of the way. That's all."

"By locking us in this tiny room? Sure, very original, doc." said Knuckles.

"Oh, we'll just have to break out of this tiny hole really fast, kick your sorry butt and save the day, right Knux?" said Sonic cheerfully.

"Sonic, why don't you shut up and let me do the talking?"

"Oh, no, I can…"

"I INSIST!" yelled Knuckles as he cracked his fingers, looking ready to give Sonic a knock-out blow. Sonic held up his hands in defeat, knowing not to push his luck. Knuckles once again shook his head in irritation. "One minute, he was sulking about being horrible to Tails, and the next minute, he reverts back to being an insufferable hedgehog with a mouth that never seems to rest" thought the annoyed guardian.

"Ahem, now that you've sorted out your roles, may I continue?" Eggman asked with feigned politeness. After receiving icy glares from both the hedgehog and the echidna, he smirked and continued on with his speech.

"As you may have noticed, even Knuckles can't break out of your little cell. I specifically designed it myself after all. All you need to do is sit there and relax while I commence my master plan to conquer the world. Don't worry, we have live cable in here, so I will let you see my work when the time comes."

After that, Eggman turned off the screen and left Sonic and Knuckles to figure out how to get out of their prison cell before and stop Eggman before the mad doctor set whatever he was up to in motion.

"So, any idea?" asked Knuckles.

Sonic was about to say "Am I allowed to speak now?", but the Knuckles' face told him that he shouldn't push it. The hedgehog seemed to think for a few moments before he used his spin dash attack on the walls, but he only ended up bouncing around the cell, almost hitting Knuckles multiple times, much to the echidna's annoyance. Due to the small size of the room, Sonic couldn't stop ricocheting.

"Knuckles, catch me!" yelled the bouncing hedgehog.

Knuckles readied himself and planted his feet on the ground. When Sonic was perfectly in sight, he held his arms and stopped the hedgehog's ball form in his track, putting an end to Sonic's dangerous bouncing.

"Any more bright ideas, hedgehog?"

Once again, Sonic thought for a while, and then turned to look at Knuckles, "Try throwing me at the wall with all your strength and see if that works."

Knuckles didn't really like this plan, but it was all they had, so he decided to give it a shot. Sonic curled up into a ball and Knuckles picked him up, ready for the test. The red echidna sent all of his strength into his arm and threw Sonic at the opposite wall. The force was extremely strong, probably enough to make Sonic smash through multiple layers of metal with relative ease.

Sonic hit the wall with a loud thud, but he ended up ricocheting right in Knuckles' face, knocking him back. The guardian let out a painful cry when Sonic hit him. The force of the ricochet managed to bruise his head.

"Ouch! That hurt!" growled the angry echidna.

"Sorry about that, Knux. Looks like Eggman is right for once. We can't get out. Jeez, what is this wall made of anyway?" said Sonic as he tapped his knuckle on the wall.

"If only Tails were here, maybe he could meddle with Eggman's systems or anything and open the door for us." said Knuckles innocently, unaware of the effect the fox's name had on Sonic.

Sonic's face dropped almost immediately at the name of his best friend. Guilt came back to him and the cobalt speedster looked at his feet in shame. Running around and smashing Eggman's robots had managed to get Sonic's mind off of the morning's incident, but now that Knuckles mentioned it, the unpleasant memories flooded back.

"Tails…" muttered Sonic to himself as he hung his head in shame.

Knuckles noticed the change in Sonic's attitude and got close to his hedgehog companion, "He'll be fine. You two fight all the time, but you still make up in the end, right?"

"But this isn't like those other times. I messed up big time, and now Tails is probably having nightmares about his past. His face…when I called him that…" Sonic's voice trailed off as he spoke. The guilt was clearly eating away at his mind. The image of Tails' crying face popped back into his head, and once again, the blue blur trembled at the thought that Tails would hate him for life.

"Alright, we'll get out of here, kick Eggman's butt and get back to the workshop to see him, cool?"

"Nice plan, Knucklehead, but you missed one crucial detail: How the heck are we going to break out of this cell?" said Sonic.

As soon as Sonic finished his sentence, the room began to shake slightly, which both surprised and worried the trapped heroes. Suddenly, the wall behind Sonic split and revealed a path. Both the hedgehog and the echidna were clearly taken aback by the strange turn of event, and wondered if it was just another one of Eggman's tricks.

"What did you do, Knuckles?"

"I did nothing. I've been standing here talking to you the whole time, hedgehog." Knuckles looked at the exit suspiciously before turning back to Sonic, "So, should we?"

"I don't think we have much of a choice here, if it's a trap, then so be it." said Sonic without a second of hesitation. He quickly sped off through the exit, leaving his partner behind.

Knuckles growled in frustration. However, the guardian was wondering why Eggman would just let them go after all that trouble. A moment later, another question popped up in his head, "If it's not Eggman, then who?"

The echidna quickly shook the doubts off his head and ran after Sonic.

…

Outside the Egg Citadel's current location, an aircraft stealthily approached the flying base undetected by its numerous cameras. The pilot looked at the screen on a handheld device and it showed something that looked like schematics of the giant castle. The pilot smirked and pushed the buttons rapidly with one hand, bypassing the mad scientist's firewall and hacking into the Egg Citadel's system.

"Alright, I'm in. Time to crack this egg wide open." said the pilot as he continued his work.

**So, who do you think our "mysterious" hacker is? I'm sure everyone knows who already, right? But for the sake of the story, keep it to yourselves. Please give me your thoughts and opinions. **

**The next chapter will be up pretty soon. In the meantime, check out my other completed stories if you have time. Thank you.  
**


	5. Chapter 5

**Alright, update time. Here's the new chapter. Also, thank you very much for your comments**.

Chapter 5: Maze

Inside the Egg Citadel's control room…

A siren suddenly went off inside the room, alerting Eggman to the security footage. The mad scientist looked at the screen and saw that Sonic and Knuckles had somehow managed to escape their confinement, a feat that he had deemed impossible, and made him throw a tantrum.

"I don't believe it!" shouted Eggman, "How on earth did they escape? I made sure that the cell would resist anything they're capable of…"

Eggman crushed a mug of coffee that he was holding and slammed his hand on the keyboard. After a few minutes, he calmed down and diverted his gaze at the security footage of the level Sonic and Knuckles were currently at.

"Never mind then. I still have a backup plan for you, hedgehog. Computer, activate Protocol NWO-7 (No way out)."

"Activating Protocol NWO-7." said a monotone computer voice.

Eggman smirked and turned his attention back to the security footage and watched his enemies intently, "Now, you'll know what's it like to be trapped like a lab rat, pests."

With that, Eggman turned away from the screen and continued with what he had been doing...

* * *

Inside the Egg Citadel…

Sonic had sped out of his and Knuckles' shared cell and was running around looking for Eggman's main control room. Along his path, the blue hedgehog was intercepted by a lot of Egg Pawns, which he quickly disposed of without much difficulty, courtesy of his infamous spin dash attack.

Knuckles had managed to catch up with Sonic by following the trail of destroyed robots. The echidna was not one to stand still and idle, either. He used his brute strength and tossed the pieces of metal lying everywhere on the ground at the security guns on the walls with impressive force. Knuckles' aims were spot-on, and the guns were smashed as soon as they were hit.

"So, any idea where we should go?" asked Knuckles as he dusted his hands. A robot snuck up on him from behind, but he smashed it with a powerful jab without so much as turning his head around.

"Beats me." replied Sonic as he sat on the head of an Egg Soldier, making it dance around in circle trying to shake the hedgehog off. When Sonic got bored, he unleashed a downward spin and split the unfortunate bot in half. "This place is one huge maze. I've been running around for a while now, and I still can't find the way out."

Knuckled looked around for a while. He noticed that something was strange. The place they were at looked like an endless corridor.

Knuckles then grabbed a piece of metal on the ground and drew a giant X on the wall. Sonic looked at the echidna and realized what he was doing.

"There. That should let us know where we start from." said Knuckles, "Now then, let's move."

Without delay, the heroes began navigating through the maze. This so-called maze was very plain, and they both wondered if it could even be called a maze at all. Basically, the place consisted of long corridors that led to some intersections, that was all. The color scheme effectively created a perfect camouflage for the Egg Pawns, not that they could use it to their advantage, however. Also, there were electronic boards attached to the walls of each passage at each intersection. It appeared they served no particular purpose beside letting Eggman communicate with the trapped heroes.

Navigating through the maze without being disturbed was hard enough, but Sonic and Knuckles had to find their way out and deal with ambushes set by Eggman's forces. At some points, the Egg Pawns would just jump out of nowhere and started throwing lethal projectiles at the heroes. Other times, automatic security guns would pop out of the wall and started shooting without warning.

Sonic and Knuckles, however, didn't have too much trouble with the robots' pathetic attempts at sneak attacks. They easily dodged and responded to every ambush using their well-honed instincts and reflexes. Sonic would take care of the annoying Egg Pawns, while Knuckles would throw the robots' remains at the guns to disable them.

The heroes had no real problem with Eggman's robots, but they were having quite a headache with the maze. For some reason, they felt like they were just walking around and around without much progress. They walked along the corridors and tried every path at each intersection, but still they couldn't locate the exit.

After what seemed like a few hours of walking, Sonic and Knuckles stopped and stared at a particular wall with their eyes wide open. It had a 'X' carved onto it, so that meant Sonic and Knuckles had successfully returned to square one.

"What the hell?" yelled Knuckles in irritation, "How did we manage to get back here?" The hot-headed guardian punched the wall with a mighty force, but his punch could only ruin the paint job of the wall, nothing more.

"It's a maze, Knux. I have to admit, the doc did something good for once." said Sonic as he looked around.

"This is no time for admiration, Sonic. We need to get out of this place. Who knows what kind of chaos Eggman is causing outside."

"How about we split up and look for the exit individually?" suggested Sonic, "The first one to get out can head to Egghead's place, beat him up and teleport us out."

"Teleport?"

"Well, he must have some sort of teleportation device. If not, we can always ask him to show us the way out…nicely." Sonic put an emphasis on the words "ask" and "nicely".

Knuckles thought for a few moments before turning back to look at Sonic, "Alright, that looks like the only option we have left. Let's do it, but how do we know if one of us has got out?"

"Tails' wristwatch doubles as a communication device. Actually, it has everything, scanner, camera, even texting functions. Use it." Sonic's voice became visibly shaken at the mention of the fox's name, but he tried his best to remain calm. He needed to get out of the maze first.

Knuckles turned on his wristwatch that Tails had given him a few months ago and searched for the communication function. Thank Chaos the fox had designed the watch to be user-friendly, so even Knuckles, who was not so good at technology (he spends his entire life on Angel Island after all) could easily find what he was looking for.

The echidna nodded and carved a bigger X mark on the wall. Once that was done, Sonic and Knuckles walked to the nearest intersection, crossing the seemingly useless electronic boards, and went separate ways.

* * *

Outside the Egg Citadel, the same figure had landed his aircraft on top of a building close to the fortress and continued hacking into Eggman's systems. The enigma opened up a number of files he had managed to download from the mad doctor's mainframe on his handheld device and clicked on a file that had "Protocols" written on it. He searched until his eyes fell on the one called "Protocol NWO-7". He opened the file and began studying the aforementioned protocol and how it worked.

* * *

**In case you wonder how Knuckles managed to carve the 'X' on the wall, the metal pieces he used only ruined the paint job, not the wall itself. The walls inside the maze are extremely durable, as described in this chapter. That's all. **

**Since weekend is over and I have part time job and schoolwork to do, the next chapters may take a while. I already have already finished typing every chapter of the story, but I have to edit them carefully before putting them up. Please be patient. Thank you for your support. **


	6. Chapter 6

**Update! Update! Update! **

**You no longer have to wait**

******I hope this chapter will make your day.**

**The next one will be up without (much) delay.**

**I suck at poem, I know. *facepalm* Well, at least I tried.**

**Well, editing took less time than I first anticipated. My lecturers have an urgent meeting, so school's out for the day and the best part: NO HOMEWORK. HELL YEAH! That also means more time to edit the next chapter and it should be up by tomorrow or maybe earlier. **

**About ABCSonicKirbyWarriors' question about what the walls are made of, that's for later. I've got plans, big plans for them for another project I'm working on. **

Chapter 6: No Way Out

Inside the Egg Citadel's control room…

Eggman was busy with his attacks on major cities now that his most hated nemesis was trapped inside his inescapable maze. In fact, the mad doctor was so busy that he didn't even pay attention to the computer screen, thus he didn't notice that his files were being copied and downloaded one by one.

* * *

Outside the Egg Citadel…

The hacker had almost finished downloading every file and every plan that Eggman had. He looked at the screen of his portable device and studied Protocol NWO-7 carefully. Once he was done, he typed something on his device and smirked.

"So that's how it works. Only one thing left to do." The enigma hunched over and began typing like there was no tomorrow.

* * *

Inside the Egg Citadel's maze…

After splitting up with Knuckles, Sonic started to pick up the pace and ran through every passage and corridor he could find. Several times, the hedgehog was forced to slow down by Eggman's robots, but like before, they didn't really post much of a threat. He either used his trademark spin dash attack and rammed through the approaching Egg Pawns or simply tricked the simple-minded robots into destroying each other.

"Strike!" exclaimed Sonic as he crashed into a bunch of Egg Pawns, knocking them all over the place. His celebration didn't last long, however, as he sped off once again and continued to navigate through the maze.

Although the maze was quite simple in design, escaping it was anything but simple. There were a lot of one-way passages that led to another, and all of the seemed to be moving around in circle. Sometimes, the passages would lead to an intersection, and that was all.

After reaching the end of the passage he was running along, Sonic skidded to a stop at another intersection. He sighed in frustration and walked to the middle of the crossroad, debating on which path to take. Suddenly, a beeping noise came from one of the boards, which attracted the cobalt hero's attention. The screen came up and showed Eggman's smirking face.

"Ho ho ho, how are you faring, Sonic?" taunted the scientist.

"Eggman, let us out this instant." demanded Sonic in annoyance. He hated being cooped up in one place for long, and things had indeed gone on for too long for his taste.

"Now where would the fun in that be? Besides, I like to see you run around my little maze like a perfectly well-behaved lab rat."

"I don't have time for your game, Egghead. I have a more important thing I need to do today, so I'll cut you a deal. Let us out right now and we'll let you leave peacefully, or keep us here and we'll eventually find the way out and kick your sorry butt so hard, you won't be able to sit upright for a couple of months. So what's it going to be, Butt-nik?"

"Your offers sound…tempting, but I'll go with neither. I don't know how you and the red mutt managed to get out of your containment cell, but I'm positively sure that you'll never be able to escape my maze. It's designed specifically to keep you and your friends in, a genius feat that only yours truly can accomplish."

Sonic frowned as he listened to the mad doctor gloat. He was really ticked off, and hearing Eggman's taunts didn't really help improve his mood.

"Then consider you've chosen the latter, Eggman. Better get your butt ready for my shoes when I find you." Sonic snarled, but the mad scientist only laughed and looked at his clock.

"Much as I love to stay and chat, I have other pressing matters that require my immediate attention, so I'll just leave you to your own device. Do take your time, Sonic. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of cities to smash, a lot of governments to take down, and a lot of havoc to wreak. Fare badly, rodent."

With that, the screen turned off, and Sonic was left alone to think about his situation, "Man, I really wish Tails were here, he might be able to figure out how we can escape…Tails…" The hedgehog's thoughts trailed off and flashed back to the unfortunate event that had taken place in the morning. "If only I hadn't been so stubborn, we wouldn't be in this situation in the first place. If I had said sorry, maybe we'd have gotten out of this place already…"

Sonic stood where he was, completely lost in his thoughts. After a few minutes, the hedgehog shook his head and cleared his mind. "One thing at a time, Sonic. First get out of here and save the day, then get back and apologize to Tails for being a jerk." With that, Sonic chose the right passage and sped off, resuming his search for an exit.

"Man, I really hope Knuckles is having better luck than me." muttered Sonic as he ran along his chosen passage.

* * *

Meanwhile…

Contrary to Sonic's hope, Knuckles didn't have any luck at all. The grumpy guardian of the Master Emerald walked around the maze indignantly, smashing all of the robots that were unfortunate and foolish enough to enter the ticked-off guardian's field of vision. Knuckles admitted that those simple-minded robots actually provided him with stress relief and distraction that he desperately yearned for after being trapped for who-knows-how-long.

At some point, the hot-headed guardian tried punching the wall once again to see if they would crumble or at least crack or something. Much to his charging, however, his powerful blow didn't even so much as put a dent on the target. He let out a frustrated sigh and continued on. After a relatively long walk and a lot of smashing, the echidna reached the ever so familiar intersection.

The sight of the intersection before him only worsened Knuckles' already rotten mood. He simply shook his head and randomly chose his passage with "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe". His fist pointed at the passage on the left in the end, so he just went along, not even bothering to think anymore.

Along the way, more idiotic robots tried to get the drop on him, only to get brutally disassembled by the ill-tempered guardian.

"I'm getting really tired of this hellhole." muttered the angry echidna as he walked along his chosen passage. Since Sonic had never made any call, he could safely assume that the hedgehog was experiencing the same problem he was having. He continued to walk, smashing even more robots in the process. Each corridor looked more like a dump after Knuckles passed through.

After what seemed like hours, Knuckles reached a spot he desperately wished he would never see again. In front of him stood the familiar wall with the "X" mark, which made the guardian roar furiously and sat down on the ground with his face in his palm.

"I can't believe this. What the heck is wrong with this stupid place?" Knuckles asked himself as he slammed his fist on the ground, but it didn't even crack.

A few minutes later, Sonic arrived at the same spot. After spotting Knuckles sitting on the ground with a murderous aura oozing out of him, the hedgehog understood the situation and walked up to his friend.

"So, how did it go?" asked Knuckles sarcastically, knowing the answer already.

"Apart from an unproductive conversation with Egghead, nothing." Knuckles only growled after hearing this.

Seeing the frustrated Knuckles made Sonic sigh as well. He was also tired from running around aimlessly, but he didn't allow himself to give up. Sonic had a more important task after this, he was determined to get that task done no matter what.

"I'll just make another run around to see if I can find anything." Sonic said as he walked away from the echidna, who seemed too annoyed by the situation to care. Sonic ran along the passage behind Knuckles and once again reached the intersection. The speedy hedgehog was about to speed off, but he was stopped by a strange beeping noise coming from the electronic board.

"Not that Egghead again" muttered Sonic irritably, "I really, really don't want to see his face right now."

Sonic turned around and looked at the board and saw something written on them. He went closer to get a better look, and saw a series of numbers that made no sense to him whatsoever at first glance.

The message read

_20-9-16-19_

_20-8-5-18-5 9-19 1 13-15-20-9-15-14 19-5-14-19-15-18 15-14 20-8-5 2-15-1-18-4_

_20-8-5 24-1-12-12-19 13-15-22-5 23-8-5-14 25-15-21 3-18-15-19-19 9-20_

_12-5-6-20 13-15-22-5-19 18-9-7-8-20_

_21-16 13-15-22-5-19 4-15-23-14_

_19-12-9-16 20-8-18-15-21-7-8 20-8-5 3-18-1-3-11-19 23-8-5-14 20-8-5-25 4-15_

Needless to say, Sonic was perplexed by the strange message. He thought it was just another one of Eggman's tricks, but his gut feeling told him that someone was trying to give him a hint on how to escape this nightmare maze.

"What in the name of Chaos is this?" asked Sonic in bewilderment.

Despite the initial surprise at the sudden appearance of the message, Sonic stood still, looking at the board tentatively and trying his hardest to decipher the cryptic message. Something inside the hedgehog told him that solving this riddle would be they key to get out of the dreadful maze.

* * *

Outside the Egg Citadel, the enigma turned off his device and smiled.

"Hope you get the message, Sonic. That's all I can give you without Eggman knowing" muttered the enigma to himself as he looked at the Egg Citadel from where he was standing.

**Until next time, everyone. Thank you for reading. Do review. I love to know your thoughts and opinions.**

**Also, try cracking the code to kill some time (if you have time to kill that is). It's not difficult at all. In fact, I bet some of you may even be able to figure it out at first glance. However, if you do figure out the answer, please, by all means, keep it to yourself for the sake of the story. The answer will be revealed in the next chapter.**


	7. Chapter 7

**As promised, here's the new chapter. This one took me a lot of time and effort to write, and it's the longest chapter to date. A few moments of brotherly fluff and friendly quarrel.  
**

** It came out quite nicely in my mind, but I'd love to hear your opinions. **

**Also, congrats if you know how to crack the code. Kudos and many thanks to ABCSonicKirbyWarriors for your time and support. **

Chapter 7: Escape

Inside the Egg Citadel's control room…

Eggman was busy with his full-scale war on the major cities of the world. He didn't even bother to direct his gaze at the security footage of the maze, and thus oblivious to the mysterious message Sonic had received.

* * *

Inside the maze…

Sonic was still trying his hardest to decipher the message, but it was more difficult than he thought. A bunch of random numbers really made no sense to him no matter how hard he tried.

"What the heck is the deal with these numbers? Is somebody trying to help me out, or planning on giving me a major headache of a lifetime?" said Sonic to himself as he paced around, "Argh, I can't think of anything. Tails is the genius, not me...Tails...is..." The cobalt hero quickly shook his head to clear his mind and got back to the matter at hand.

After using up more grey matter than he had ever attempted in a long time, the hedgehog decided to ask his red buddy for help. Sonic opened his communication wristwatch and contacted Knuckles.

"DID YOU FIND THE WAY OUT?" boomed the voice of the ecstatic echidna through the speaker, which made Sonic fall flat on his butt in surprise. Said hedgehog had to cover his ears for a moment to block out his friend's sudden outburst.

"No, not yet, but...maybe" said Sonic.

"I'm not in the mood for your stupid games, Sonic. Did you or did you _**not**_ find the way out?" growled Knuckles on the other side. In his mind, the red echidna thought that Sonic was being annoying again, and he had good reasons to do so (as clearly shown in the previous chapters).

"I think I may have found something, or it found me," said Sonic as his voice got softer as he spoke.

"What do you mean?"

"Just, come to my location. Press the red button on your watch to use the tracking application."

"The one with a skull mark on it?" asked Knuckles innocently, clearly clueless when it came to technology.

"Yeah sure, if you want to the watch to explode in your face," yelled Sonic's annoyed voice through the echidna's speaker, "And you call yourself a treasure hunter?"

"Hey, I don't know that much about technology, okay. I thought the meanings of warning signs were the same as what I'm used to."

"What do you normally do when you see a sign with a skull on it then?" asked the hedgehog as he raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Walk right in, of course. When people put up signs like that, it means they have something to hide, and it's my job as a treasure hunter to dig up their secrets" exclaimed Knuckles proudly as he hit his chest with his hand. Being an adventurer and treasure hunter had pretty much twisted his sense of what was safe and what not (Spending his entire on Angel Island seriously did a number on his concept of danger).

Sonic shook his head and smacked his it with his hand, "Sure. Leave it to old Knucklehead to conclude that a red button with a skull mark is safe to press" thought Sonic irritably, "I'll have to tell Tails never to let Knuckles go anywhere near his inventions, ever, especially the ones that have self-destruct buttons".

Sonic really wanted to speak some sense into his pal, but quickly decided against it. Neither hero had time for this meaningless argument at the moment.

"Just...stand there, and I'll fetch you" said Sonic as he cut off.

No sooner had Knuckles put his hand down than a blue blur encircled him and grabbed him by the arm. The next minute, the red echidna found himself the intersection.

* * *

Sonic then proceeded to showing Knuckles the cryptic message on the screen and asked if he could make head or tail of it.

"So, what do you think?" asked Sonic, hoping that Knuckles, with all of his knowledge and experience, could solve the riddle.

"Why do you think this message can get out of here?" asked the guardian as he rubbed his chin, thinking about a way to solve the problem presented to him.

"I don't know. I just...know, okay. Call it gut feeling, or intuition, but I think there is something about this message that can help us find the exit."

"Gut feeling?"

"_It was easier to know it than to explain why I know it. If you were asked to prove that two and two made four, you might find some difficulty, and yet you are quite sure of the fact._" said Sonic as he closed his eyes and acted like a lecturer in philosophy, much to the red echidna's surprise.

"Sherlock Holmes? Really?" asked Knuckles with eyes as wide as saucers.

"Hey, I read, too you know. Well, more like being forced to read" muttered Sonic under his breath, but the echidna had heard him quite clearly, and it intrigued him greatly.

"What do you mean, 'forced to read'?"

"Back when I took Tails in, he kept talking my ears off about different theories, formulas, literature and all that jazz. Also, the little guy was a bit scared of sleeping in the dark room alone, not that I could blame him though, so, I let him sleep in my room for the first few weeks, and the kid kept nagging me to read him bed time stories of his choice."

"And of all the stories out there, he picked Sherlock Holmes?" asked Knuckles in bewilderment, and Sonic just nodded. The echidna couldn't decide which was weirder: that Tails had a seriously unusual picks for bed time stories, or that Sonic was the parenting type that the echidna just couldn't imagine. "Apparently, the hedgehog ages in reverse, "though Knuckles.

"Yeah, the entire collection to be exact. He used to love fiction as much as science. After all, Tails is not exactly your average fox, with his fre..." Sonic was about to say 'freakish', but he quickly slapped himself (hard), much to Knuckles' surprise, before continuing, "_extremely high_ intelligence and all. Thanks to that, I can pretty much quote every line in any Sherlock Holmes book without even trying."

The cobalt hedgehog chuckled to himself as the memories of their time together resurfaced in his mind. Those were happy times for both of them, just spending everyday in the companionship of each other and playing together to their heats' content, despite their dangerous hero's duties. He could almost hear Tails' happy laughter echo in his head and his sweet, childish voice calling his name affectionately.

The hedgehog then remembered their fight again. Once again, he trembled visibly at the thought that no more happy memories would be made with his best friend because of his stubbornness and big mouth. Sonic looked down at his feet, and once again, guilt overtook his mind. Once again, Knuckles noticed.

"I told you already. Tails'll be fine. We only need to get out of this place, beat Eggman to a pulp, then you can go back to his workshop and apologize to him for being an**_ annoying, insensitive, stubborn, egotistical, insufferable, idiotic jerk with a motor mouth_**. That's all." Knuckles said as he released all of his pent-up frustration at the hedgehog in his 'soothing' words.

"Jeez, thanks a ton for the pep talk, _**bud**_" said Sonic as he glared at the chuckling echidna, half happy and half pissed off by his 'profound' words, "But the question is how do we get out? It's not like you've come up with any answer to this little problem here." Sonic said as he pointed his finger at the message on the screen.

"About that, I've already figured out the answer while you were busy telling your back story." Knuckles said as he crossed his hands and smirked confidently.

"Really? You've got it?"

"Oh yeah. I'm a treasure hunter, so I naturally know how to deal with codes. This one is nowhere near as hard as the ones I have had to deal with."

"Alright, do enlighten me, oh great one" said Sonic as he pretended to bow his head respectfully.

"The key to solving this message is the Alphabet" said the echidna as he began to 'enlighten' the clueless hedgehog, "The numbers here represent the order of the letters in the Alphabet. We only need to know the numerical order of each letter, and this message is as good as solved. For example, number twenty is letter 'T', since it's the twentieth letter in the Alphabet. Just use that method and we'll have all the letters. As for the dashes between the numbers, I believe they connect the letters and form a word, while the space between each series of numbers represents where a new word starts. So, following method, we have the following letters."

Knuckles then picked up a piece of metal and began writing (or carving) his findings on the opposite wall.

The translated message

T-I-P-S

T-H-E-R-E I-S A M-O-T-I-O-N S-E-N-S-O-R O-N T-H-E B-O-A-R-D

T-H-E W-A-L-L-S M-O-V-E W-H-E-N Y-O-U C-R-O-S-S I-T

L-E-F-T M-O-V-E-S R-I-G-H-T

U-P M-O-V-E-S D-O-W-N

S-L-I-P T-H-R-O-U-G-H T-H-E C-R-A-C-K-S W-H-E-N T-H-E-Y D-O

* * *

"Alright, now try reading it for yourself, oh clueless one" said Knuckles mockingly.

Sonic glared at Knuckles for a moment before doing so. The hedgehog squinted his eyes and read out loud the carved message, "Tips: There is a motion sensor on the board. The walls move when you cross it. Left moves right. Up moves down. Slip through the cracks when they do."

"Basically," said the guardian, "This motion sensor *pointed at the one with the message* moves the walls of that corridor *pointed at the opposite corridor to where they were*. The same can be said about the left and right. The motion sensors make the walls move to create new dead-ends. No wonder we can't find the exit, since it doesn't exist in the first place. Eggman really managed to make things difficult for us for once."

After a brief 'Ooooh' moment, the hedgehog hugged the unsuspecting echidna next to him.

"Knucky, you're a genius, I can just kiss you right now."

"Try pressing your lips against my face and you'll go to the dentist's 24/7 for the next few years to get a new set of teeth after we're done here, hedgehog" threatened the guardian as he struggled to break free of Sonic's bear hug.

"You know your threats are nowhere near as scary as Shadow's, right?"

"What did he threaten you with?" asked Knuckles curiously. "Maybe I should ask Shadow to teach me how to shut this guy up" thought the echidna as he continued to struggle out of the tight hug.

"Well, he said something about putting a grenade in my mouth and pulling out the safety lock." Sonic shuddered at the memory of the dark hedgehog pulling out a real grenade after he had said his threat.

"Ouch!"

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Knowing Mr. Ultimate Light Bulb (Chaos Blast and Chaos Spear, anyone?), he might just do it for real."

With that, Sonic finally let go of Knuckles and allowed the echidna some fresh air that his lungs were practically screaming for.

Once Knuckles had calmed down, he directed his gaze at the message and frowned in consideration.

"So, should we try this?"

"Why not? Looks pretty legit to me. I say we give it a shot." Sonic said as he looked at Knuckles with a determined look in his eyes.

* * *

Knuckles was a little skeptical at first, due to the dubious and highly questionable nature of the message, but he decided to give it a try. Besides, it wasn't like they had another choice in the matter. Sonic and Knuckles then began to devise an escape plan.

"I'll trigger the motion sensors." said Sonic, "You go back to the wall you marked and wait. When the walls there move, use your brute strength and hold them apart. The space between the walls when they move is our way out of this stinking hellhole."

"Worth a shot." replied Knuckles.

After that, they stood up and began to set their plan in motion. Once Knuckles was in position and confirmed with Sonic via the wristwatch, the blue blur walked to the intersection, careful not to cross the electronic board just yet. The hedgehog stopped before he crossed the motion sensor. He drew a deep breath and calmed his nerves down.

Once that was done, Sonic crossed the board and quickly made his way toward the next motion sensor on the opposite corridor (the one that moved the walls of the corridor where Knuckles was at), which was opposite to the one where Sonic had come from. He turned moved his feet in front of the electronic board and quickly ran back to Knuckles' position.

True to their plan, when Sonic triggered the target motion sensor, the walls of the passage where Knuckles was standing began to move at an impressive speed. Not wasting his precious chance, the echidna quickly stepped in and used his strength to keep two walls apart, jamming the entire maze's systems and creating a small space just big enough for one person to move through one at a time.

Sonic came back a moment later and saw that their plan had worked.

"It worked." exclaimed Sonic.

"Yeah, but I can't hold these walls apart for too long. Get out now, Sonic before the exit closes."

"What about you, knucklehead?"

"I'll be fine, now go!"

Sonic thought for a while. He could go escape, but that would mean leaving Knuckles behind, and he really didn't want that. Knuckles was starting to get tired. The walls were really thick and heavy, so the task was taking a toll on him.

"What are you waiting for, hedgehog? GO!" yelled Knuckles.

Sonic thought for a little while, and a smirk crossed his muzzle.

"I have an idea to get us both out of this maze, but you're going to have to man up, Knux." Sonic said with a devious smirk on his face, ready to get back at his pal for trash talking him a few minutes earlier. Knuckles was about to ask what he was planning, but Sonic beat him to it. The hedgehog curled up into a ball and started spinning to gain momentum.

At this point, the guardian's eyes opened wide as realization kicked in. He knew what Sonic was about to do, and he did NOT like that plan.

"Sonic, no…It's a really really really bad idea…Don't you dare…"

The Guardian's words fell on deaf ears as Sonic decided to go for it anyway. The cobalt hedgehog launched himself at Knuckles at a blinding speed, hitting the echidna squarely on his back. The force of the impact made Knuckles fall forward a few feet, effectively pushing him out of the maze.

Knuckles slowly stood up and gingerly massaged his back and growled at the smug hedgehog standing in front of him.

"Told you it would get us both out." Sonic said with the same mischievous smirk on his face.

"I'll get you back for that one, hedgehog." said Knuckles angrily as he slowly stood up and dusted himself off. Finally, the heroes looked around and saw that they were really out of the maze, and that the huge maze they had been in a few minutes ago was just a tiny dome inside Eggman's fortress.

"Can't believe we were trapped in that tiny place?" said the echidna, "Now I want to find Egghead and give him a piece of my mind." Knuckles cracked his fingers and started walking toward the door.

"That makes two of us. My shoes have an appointment the Eggman's butt, and they don't want to be late."

With that, Sonic and Knuckles made their way out of the room and headed to the Egg Citadel's control room.

* * *

**I suppose many of you will find this part a little bit boring, right? If you do, I sincerely apologize. Also, I mean no disrespect to Shadow, just trying to make Sonic in-character.  
**

**As for the Sherlock Holmes' reference. I put it there for a number of reasons. Firstly, I personally love Sherlock Holmes. Secondly, Sonic's world has One Thousand and One Nights, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, so why not Sherlock Holmes. Finally, it fits the mood. Thus, your argument is invalid.**

**Maybe I should do a fanfic in which Tails is sucked into the books of Sherlock Holmes and plays the role of the world's greatest detective while trying to find his way back to reality. Knuckles could be Dr. Watson, Sonic could be Mycroft Holmes, and Blaze/Cream/Amy/Wave could be Irene Adler...On second thought, nah. That will just come out a mess with my writing skills. Too busy with another in-progress project already. Just a thought, though. **

**Well anyway, please comment and tell me what you think about this chapter, beside it being 'freakishly' long for a chapter. Thank you and stay tuned, everybody. **


	8. Chapter 8

**We're getting really close to the end. Just a couple more chapters.  
**

**Also, about my mindless rambling about the Sherlock Holmes-based fic, I really don't think I'll be able to write it. As much as I love detective stories, I suck at writing them. That and the fact that I'm writing a new story now. I'm truly sorry ShinyShiny9, but hey, you know what Toni Morrison said, _"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it" _(Quite literally in this case).**

**Well, that's all. Here's the new chapter. Less rival-to-rival quarreling and more hedgehog-on-robots violence.**

Chapter 8: War

Inside the Egg Citadel's control room…

Eggman heard the alarm go off and took a break from his work to look at the security footage. To his dismay and charging, he learned that Sonic and Knuckles had accomplished the feat that he himself deemed impossible, escaping his special maze.

"How…How did that pesky pin cushion and that red mutt escape? Impossible." shouted Eggman angrily. The mad scientist looked to another screen and grunted irritably, having found exactly out how the heroes had managed to escape, before hitting a series of buttons on the keyboard furiously.

"Attention all forces! Go to Sector 8 and destroy Sonic and Knuckles immediately. Use every means necessary. That's an order."

After giving the command, the doctor sank back into his chair and looked at the screen showing the outside of the Egg Citadel.

"Curse you, you meddling brat. You and your annoying inventions have gotten on my nerves long enough." muttered the doctor.

Eggman quickly shook his head and stood up from where he was sitting.

"I need to deal with these pests first before I escape this soon-to-be-destroyed world. This time, I will finish you once and for all, Sonic." Eggman walked into his lab to begin preparations for the inevitable arrival of his most hated enemies.

* * *

Meanwhile…

After leaving the maze, Sonic and Knuckles made for the exit. The door was shut tight, so the hot-headed echidna decided to demolish it. Fortunately, whatever material Eggman had used to build the maze and the cell wasn't used to make this giant door, possibly due to his confidence, so Knuckles' fists easily tore it apart upon impact.

"You might need to take a chill pill, knucklehead." said Sonic jokingly as he watched his friend work, "All the anger you're feeling right now, not exactly good for your health."

"Oh, I'll chill alright…once I punch that Eggman to outer space for ruining my holiday." Knuckles grumpily retorted, still holding a grudge for the hedgehog. Sonic, knowing how the guardian acted when he had anger issues, shrugged and followed Knuckles.

After they passed the through the door, the heroes were met with a spiral stair, a really big and long spiral stair, that seemed to lead all the way to the top of the Egg Citadel.

"He had all the metal to build a ridiculously huge spiral stair and yet he didn't have the decency to at least put an elevator down here. I'm giving the design a zero out of ten." said Sonic as he feigned disappointment. The echidna just shook his head and began to walk up the stair, clearly not in the mood to suffer Sonic's lame attempts at jokes.

"Who cares about the stupid design, let's move already. Knowing Eggman, there are bound to be some tricks here."

As soon as Knuckles, a bunch of security guns popped out from the staircase and started shooting. Further ahead, a bunch of Egg Pawns ran down with all kinds of weapons in hand and started throwing them at the heroes. Their weapons of choice included (but not limited to) spears, grenades, swords, knives, silverware, plates, buckets of water, and more random things they had gotten their hands on, mostly due to the Eggman's surprise order.

"Ya just have to open your mouth and say something bad, huh, Knuckles?" said Sonic as he dodged the incoming barrage of...incoming stuff.

Knuckles didn't even bother to reply. He instead grabbed some of the spears and knives being thrown and threw them right back at the robots with deadly precision, taking out more than ten of them in an instant. While Knuckles was having his target practice session, Sonic used his trademark spin dash to bounce around the staircase and took out any security guns that popped out from their holes.

"Horrible design, but one hell of a place to play Whack-a-mole." exclaimed the excited hedgehog as he continued bouncing around.

With their combined efforts, Sonic and Knuckles made short work of the mad scientist's security, but more came and soon, they were greatly outnumbered. The attacks increased in intensity and frequency as the ascended the staircases.

After a really long time and a lot of explosions, the simple-minded robots finally decided to pull out the big guns, really big guns, in the forms of bazookas and grenade launchers in an attempt to vaporize the heroes. After all, Eggman had given them orders to use 'every means necessary'.

Knuckles used some of the still functioning security guns they had just disabled and opened fire on the robots. Once again, his deadly accuracy made his targets explode almost instantly. The unstoppable guardian dodged all of the coming missiles and approached the Egg Pawns, stole their empty bazookas before they reloaded and used them as baseball bats. The guardian swung the bazookas around and whacked anything and everything he laid eyes on, including a very familiar shade of blue.

"Home run!" yelled Knuckles as he hit an Egg Pawn so hard that it flew to who-knows-where.

"Easy there knucklehead, you could have killed me with that thing." said Sonic as he tried to dodge the rampaging guardian's relentless attacks, some of which would have definitely given him a concussion if it hadn't been for his lightning-quick reflexes.

"Collateral damage." replied the ticked-off guardian. Apparently, he had yet to forget the stunt Sonic had pulled to get him out of the maze.

After that, the echidna continued to make his way up while swinging the bazookas around. On the other hand, Sonic was behind Knuckles most of the time, for fear of getting a hit by his dangerous swinging during his rampage. While the echidna took charge of clearing a path for the both of them, the hedgehog provided cover for his friend and dealt with the pesky security guns and the Egg Pawns with the grenade launchers.

Sonic, being the daredevil he was, actually treated the deadly grenades as soccer balls and kicked them back at the Egg Pawns before they exploded. Needless to say, the robots were reduced to scrap when the grenades exploded in their faces.

* * *

Despite being greatly outnumbered, Sonic and Knuckles remained unfazed as they continued to ascend the stair and head for the top floor. After running for a while, they were stopped in their track by a ridiculously huge laser cannon in the middle of the staircase, which completely blocked the path. The laser cannon began to charge up. Due to the size of the stair and the cannon, Sonic and Knuckles could tell that the its shot would be a sure-kill, so they had to destroy it before it opened fire.

"Knux, hit me with the bat." yelled Sonic to his hot-headed companion.

"I don't see Rouge here, do you?" replied the echidna sarcastically.

"Ha ha, very funny, knucklehead."

"Now you see how annoying you really are, Sonic?"

Sonic was about to say something, but quickly decided against it. They really didn't have the luxury of time when the death cannon was ready to go off at any given moment. Besides, being turned into grilled hedgehog wasn't on his list of things to do for the day, or ever. He had another task after this, and he was not about to forget it.

Without further ado, Sonic leaped into the air, curled up into a ball and began to spin. When the hedgehog's ball form was in sight, Knuckles swung the remaining bazooka he was holding with all his might, hitting Sonic and sending the blue blur crashing straight into the menacing cannon.

The force of the attack was so strong that a huge hole was punctured on the said cannon, and Sonic went through it as if it were butter. The weapon was split in half shortly after and went offline. Said hedgehog uncurled himself and gingerly touched his back, where Knuckles had hit him (hard).

"No way I'm ever doing that with you again, Knuckles." said Sonic.

"Now we're even." the echidna snickered as he actually found amusement in the situation.

"Yeah, whatever. Let's get a move on and wrap this up. I have somewhere else I'd rather be right now."

With that, Sonic and Knuckles continued to run up the stair. The rest of the trip after the laser cannon was rather smooth and peaceful (if you don't count the amount of explosions and pieces of scrap metal flying everywhere).

After about an hour or two of running without a break, Sonic and Knuckles finally arrived at a giant steel door. Like before, Knuckles threw a mighty punch at it and the door flung open immediately upon contact.

"Does it hurt to knock every once in a while, Knux?" asked Sonic jokingly.

"That's how I knock." replied the powerhouse guardian.

"Then remind me to give you a cell phone and call me down to open the door for you every time you come by. I seriously don't want to spend a fortune on fixing the door, or the house. Unless you text messages by puncturing holes on it."

With that, Sonic and Knuckles walked through the door.

Inside, it was another empty corridor. The two heroes walked along it and finally reached another steel door with Eggman's logo on it. Just like before, Knuckles got ready to break the door down, but before his fist was thrown, it opened on its own, seemingly inviting Sonic and Knuckles in.

Knowing that they had reached their final destination, Sonic and Knuckles looked at each other briefly before entering the room, expecting to face Dr. Eggman himself as the opponent.

**How was the chapter? Please give me your honest opinions. Next time: Boss battle. **


	9. Chapter 9

**Alright, time for the boss level. **

**Difficulty: CHAOS and beyond.  
**

**Enjoy. :)**

Chapter 9: Boss Battle

Behind the door was an extremely spacious room with no decoration and furniture. The room looked like it had been built to serve as a stage for a death match. Sonic and Knuckles stepped inside and looked around for a little while.

"Well, zero for design, one for reception, mostly due to the automatic door." remarked Sonic.

At this point, Knuckles had had it with the hedgehog's lame jokes, so he just shook his head and shouted out loud, "Eggman, get your butt out here and fight like a man."

As soon as he said that, a door opened on the ceiling and a huge serpent-like robot dropped down. A hatch on the robot's head opened and revealed Dr. Eggman behind the controls.

"Sonic, Knuckles, I congratulate you on making this far. I still can't believe you managed to break out of your cell and escape my maze."

"Thanks to your little message, Egghead." said Sonic, "Next time you want to trap a guy and leave him there to rot, you may want to throw away the keys and keep the secrets to yourself."

"Message?" asked Eggman in bewilderment, "What message? I never sent anything down there beside..." the doctor stopped talking immediately as realization kicked in. Eggman only grunted and muttered something inaudible under his breath. Sonic could only hear the word "brat", nothing else.

Now it was Sonic's turn to think. In fact, he had a vague feeling that it couldn't have been Eggman who had sent him the message, but he just wanted to make sure. After all, the doctor sometimes got overconfident with his schemes and accidentally blurted out the secrets.

"So, it wasn't Eggman…"thought Sonic to himself, "That means there's only one person I know who is skilled enough to hack into the doc's system and send me that message." A smile spread across the hedgehog's face as he entertained this thought. Knuckles simply stared at the hedgehog in confusion, wondering what he could find amusing at this point. Also, the guardian also found it rather strange that the smile on Sonic's face was much different from his usual smirks. That smile showed that Sonic was genuinely happy, and it showed something else as well, something akin to relief.

Before Knuckles could ask Sonic, however, Eggman broke the silence, "Whatever. Now that it's come to this, I don't care anymore. All I know now is that I'll crush you two right here, right now with my magnificent Egg Naga."

"Did you collect the remains of your Rotten Egg Viper to build this one?" asked Sonic in a mocking tone, "Cause the only difference between that one and the one you're in right now is the size."

"Well, for your information, rodent, no, I didn't. I just like my design. Also, size isn't the only difference. This one is bigger and badder, and you'll soon learn that the hard way."

"I thought the official comparative form of 'bad' was 'worse', not 'badder'. You seriously need to take a break from this whole 'world domination' thing and get some formal education, doc." said Sonic as he scratched the back of his head in mock confusion. Knuckles, at this point, had already given up on telling Sonic to be quiet, so he just smacked his face with his palm and stood there, trying his best not to knock the lights out of the blue blur.

"ARGH! SHUT UP, Sonic! I've had it with you. First you ruined the interior of my beautiful castle, now you dare to mock my genius. I'll show you who's boss around here. Time to get vaporized, pests."

The hatch closed and the serpent robot's eyes lit up, preparing to destroy Sonic and Knuckles. The Egg Naga roared mightily and shook the entire room with the shockwave, then locked on to its targets. Sonic and Knuckles looked at each other briefly and nodded, getting ready for the serpent's attack.

* * *

And thus, the battle began.

The Egg Naga was the first one to make a move. It launched itself forward in an attempt to crush Sonic and Knuckles with its enormous fangs, an attack that Sonic and Knuckles quickly evaded by jumping out of the way.

In one quick motion, the serpent turned around and unloaded a barrage of missiles in every direction. The omni-directional attack was fierce, but it was nothing new for veterans such as Sonic and Knuckles.

Like before, Knuckles smashed the ground and threw the pieces of metal at the missiles, taking out several of them. At the same time, Sonic used his spin dash attack to hit some missiles, making them collide with the others. After a short while, all of the missiles were either detonated prematurely or off target.

The Egg Naga roared again and used its long, spiky tail to attack. The tail was enormous with numerous sharp spikes on it. Being hit by that thing pretty much equaled being impaled by thousands of swords at the same time. The force created by the tail was so powerful that it caused an earthquake as soon as it hit the ground.

Luckily, Sonic and Knuckles quickly jumped up and managed to land squarely on the back of the robot's tail, where there were no spikes. Seizing the opportunity, Sonic started spinning to gain momentum while Knuckles, already knowing what his partner was up to, focused all his strength on his namesakes and punched the hedgehog forward, giving him even more speed and power.

Sonic's ball form rolled along the length of the great robotic serpent at an impressive speed, scratching is body with his quills, and finally landed a direct and critical hit on its chin with a mighty collision, knocking the serpent back a few feet.

Despite the sheer force of the impact, Eggman's cockpit remained mostly undamaged. The doctor only growled in irritation and quickly regained control of the Egg Naga. The menacing serpent immediately opened its mouth and shot its gigantic fangs at Sonic in an attempt to impale him to death.

Said hedgehog was still in the air above the serpent's head after his last attack, so he couldn't react quickly enough to the sudden move made by Eggman. Fortunately for the blue blur, Knuckles came to his aid.

The echidna used his glide ability to reach Sonic's place and grabbed the fangs tightly with his bare hands just before they reached Sonic. The guardian then proceeded to using the fangs as weapons and rapidly slashing the Egg Naga's head, momentarily blinding Eggman and giving Sonic another chance to attack.

Sonic gave Knuckles a quick thumbs-up post in midair and smirked. He then used gravity to his advantage and let himself fall freely until he was close enough to land another hit on the serpent. Once the blue blur was within range, he unleashed a second homing attack at Eggman's cockpit, knocking the Egg Naga back a few feet once again.

"Curse you, pests!" yelled Eggman angrily as he pushed a series of buttons on the keyboards to recover from his nemesis' latest direct attack.

The Egg Naga let out a deafening roar, which generated an extremely powerful shockwave and sent the heroes pummeling down to the ground at an amazing speed, making them hit the metal floor below and effectively creating a huge dent on it. Sonic and Knuckles were slightly taken aback by the sudden attack. The heroes groaned in pain as they tried to get on their feet.

Soon, they managed to do so and prepared themselves again for another vicious attack.

* * *

"Time to finish you off once and for all." said Eggman angrily as he once again pressed a series of buttons.

The Egg Naga then quickly slithered around the spacious room and increased in speed as it continued. At this point, Sonic and Knuckles found out that they were in the middle of the room, trapped within the tiny space created by the gigantic spinning body of the Egg Naga. The heroes stayed on guard and got ready for the doctor's next move.

"Whatever he's planning, it can't be good. Be on high alert, hedgehog." said Knuckles as he looked at the giant crimson blur of the Egg Naga slithering around the room. In fact, the Egg Naga was moving so quick that it actually looked like a giant crimson hurricane, and Sonic and Knuckles were trapped right in the eye of that hurricane.

"I know, Knux. You too." replied Sonic.

All of the sudden, the spikes on the Egg Naga's body shone brightly and shot some bolts of laser at the trapped heroes. The initial attacks were sudden, so they managed to scratch Sonic's arm and Knuckles' dreadlocks, making the unsuspected heroes yelp in pain. After the initial attacks, the bolts of laser increased in frequency and intensity.

Because their moving space was greatly limited by the Egg Naga's slithering form, Sonic and Knuckles had a hard time dodging all of the laser bolts shot at them. Some managed to hit Sonic's quills and Knuckles' leg, once again making both heroes yelp in pain and charring their bodies.

In a moment of desperation, Knuckles slammed his fist on the ground and used the metal plates to cover Sonic and himself, effectively creating a temporary refuge to block the nasty barrage of incoming laser bolts. Outside, they could clearly tell that more and more bolts were being shot. The situation clearly didn't look good for the heroes.

* * *

"This is getting us nowhere. We're trapped." said Sonic as he summarized their current situation.

Outside, the torrent of deadly laser bolts continued to hit the makeshift bunker, making the metal plates heat up and burning Knuckles' hands in the process. However, the echidna refused to let go of the hot metal plates, knowing full well that they were the only things standing between them and certain doom.

"You have any idea? 'Cause I don't think our little hut can withstand more hits." asked Knuckles as he desperately tried to hold the plates together.

Sonic looked through the crack and paid attention to the movement of the Egg Naga. Even Sonic admitted that the robot was moving at a rather impressive speed. However, the blue blur, being used to breakneck speed himself, could clearly see when the serpent's head entered his field of vision.

The speedy hedgehog looked at the Egg Naga's movement intently and calculated the time when the serpent's head would enter his sight. To be sure, Sonic watched again and again until he got the right time down.

"Exactly five seconds." muttered Sonic under his breath.

"What?" asked Knuckles in confusion as he tried to keep the makeshift bunker together, a task that was becoming more and more difficult with his burned hands.

"No need to worry knucklehead. When I give you the signal, I want you to use all of your strength and punch me in this direction, understand?" Sonic said and pointed at the crack he had been looking through for the last couple of minutes.

"Why?" asked Knuckles.

"Just trust me on this, I have an idea to cut this snake's head off. Just hope that all those years of listening to Tails' rambling about physics help."

Knuckles didn't understand what Sonic was up to, but he nodded and let the hedgehog take the lead.

Once again, Sonic curled into a tight spinning ball and got ready. In his mind, he silently counted down from five. Knuckles held the bunker together with one hand and sent all of his strength to the other, waiting patiently for his cobalt partner to give him the signal.

"Wait for it…and…NOW!" shouted Sonic.

Wasting no time, Knuckles gave Sonic's ball form all the boost the hedgehog needed. The blue blur shot right out of the makeshift bunker and through the barrage of deadly laser bolts. Sonic's timing paid off, because his attack landed squarely on the Egg Naga's head, knocking Eggman's Eggmobile right out of it.

"Impossible!" yelled Eggman in surprise as the Eggmobile was hit and destroyed by his nemesis.

Without Eggman controlling it, the Egg Naga instantly went offline and fell flat to the ground. The Eggmobile was destroyed by Sonic's attack, so Eggman had no way of regaining control of his prized creation.

Just to make sure the robotic serpent stayed dead, Knuckles quickly sprinted out of his refuge and slammed his fists on the Egg Naga's head, destroying it instantly. The once menacing serpent was now nothing more than useless scrap metal lying on the ground.

Eggman couldn't believe it, he was beaten yet again.

"Curse you, Sonic. You've defied me for the last time. I'll be back, and I'll destroy you for sure." Eggman threw a fit of tantrum before taking out a small remote and pressed a button to teleport himself out of the room, and possibly out of the Egg Citadel. Sonic looked at Knuckles with a smirk on his face and said to the guardian.

"Told you he had a teleportation device."

"Zip it, Sonic. Let's just shut this thing down and get out of here. I'm tired of all this." retorted the grumpy echidna.

* * *

After that, they made their way to the control room. Once inside, they were met with a room full of buttons and computer screens of all sizes, shapes and colors. Both Knuckles and Sonic were not mechanic experts, so neither could figure out what buttons would shut the Egg Citadel down.

"So…" said Sonic as he decided to break the silence, "Any idea how we can shut this thing down, Knux."

"Do I look like your genius two-tailed buddy?" replied the ticked-off echidna.

Sonic flinched once again at the mention of his best friend, but he tried his best not to show it. He needed to get out of the Egg Citadel right now so he could go back to the workshop and apologize to Tails.

"Anyway, while I'm no mechanic…" said Knuckles as he cracked his fingers, "I'm a demolition expert."

After that, the amethyst-eyed guardian slammed his namesakes into every piece of equipment in the control room, practically smashing anything and everything he could find. The entire fortress shook for a while, and when the heroes turned their heads to look outside the window, they could clearly see that the Egg Citadel was falling, fast.

The hedgehog and the echidna braced for impact. The Egg Citadel hit the ground with a mighty force, making the two trapped heroes inside the control room hang on to dear lives.

Soon, the rough landing was over. Sonic broke the window of the control room and got out, followed by Knuckles. They landed on the earthy ground and were glad that they had finally gotten out of that nightmarish fortress. Sonic leaned down and kissed the soil passionately while Knuckles looked at him in confusion.

"Don't you have somewhere else you'd rather be, hedgehog?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do." Sonic quickly bolted up and sped off in the direction of the Mystic Ruins. However, he skidded to a stop and turned around to look at the red echidna again. Said echidna raised an eyebrow questioningly at Sonic's sudden action. Before he could say anything, however, Sonic beat him to it, yet again.

"Thanks for everything, Knuckles."

After that, he disappeared in a flash of blue, leaving Knuckles alone at the crash site. The guardian simply shook his head and sighed loudly, "Annoying hedgehog…"

He then turned his gaze to look at the direction Sonic had sped off for a moment. A smirk briefly appeared on his face before he turned around and began making his way back to Angel Island to get a much-needed shuteye. It was almost nightfall already, and it had been an extremely long day for everyone.

With that, Knuckles used his glide ability to head back to his beloved home and resumed his duty as the sole guardian of the Master Emerald...after a good night's sleep first, of course.

* * *

**If you can't imagine the Egg Naga's final attack, imagine yourself trapped inside a really tiny room and surrounded by guns, or anything you prefer, in every (emphasis on the word 'every') direction. Need I say more?  
**

**As usual, reviews are highly appreciated and cherished. The next chapter will be the final chapter of this side of the story. So stay tuned everybody. Thank you all for your time and support. **


	10. Chapter 10

**Here it is, the final chapter of Sonic and Knuckles' story. Exactly 10 chapters long, yay me.**

** Enjoy, and don't forget to review. Also, please read my notes at the end of the story to know more about my upcoming project. Thank you. :)**

Chapter 10: Apology

After leaving the crash site of the Egg Citadel, Sonic made his way back to the Mystic Ruins. The blue blur picked up the pace and continued to run like his life depended on it, and it was somewhat true. Sonic knew he had an important task to do, and he would do it no matter how beat-up and tired he was.

After a few minutes of running across the city, forest, and mountains, Sonic finally made it to his destination: Tails' workshop. The blue blur allowed himself a few moments to catch his breath, then quickly went inside Tails and his shared home.

The workshop was exactly the same when he had left, the smashed TV was still there, and the floor was still broken.

"I guess Tails was too angry at me to get these fixed." thought Sonic to himself. Suddenly, a smile crossed his face and he spoke quietly to himself, "Or he was just too busy doing something else."

Sonic then quietly walked upstairs to Tails' room. It was just like when he had left. The door of Tails' bedroom was close, and everything looked normal. The blue blur peeped through the keyhole like he had done earlier, and saw the sleeping figure of his best friend still in bed, with his back toward the door, just like before.

Sonic stood up straight and breathed deeply to calm his nerves down, trying to come up with an apology.

"Just go inside and say sorry for being an annoying, insensitive, stubborn, egotistical, insufferable, idiotic jerk, then ask him for forgiveness. Great, look what you're making me say, Knucklehead." said the hedgehog irritably under his breath.

At the same time on Angel Island, a certain echidna sneezed loudly, even though the air was not very cold.

"Sonic, you can do this." Sonic muttered to himself under his breath. Apparently, the task that he was about to do was a bazillion times more difficult than facing Eggman's forces and the deadly Egg Naga.

Once he made sure he was ready, Sonic gently knocked on the door, patiently waiting for a reply from his best friend.

"Go away, Sonic." piped the soft voice of the two-tailed fox inside the room. Sonic visibly flinched when Tails spoke to him in such a cold tone, but it was understandable. Sonic had called Tails by the name he hated the most in his life, so the fox had every right to be angry at him.

However, there was something off in the fox's tone. Despite the coldness of that tone, Sonic could feel something strange, like the anger in it was somewhat forced.

The blue blur smiled a little in relief and said back in a gentle tone, "Tails, I just want to talk to you for a while. Could you at least hear me out? Just five minutes. Promise."

After a moment of silence, Tails' voice spoke up on the inside of the door and told Sonic to come in. Needless to say, Sonic was screaming internally that Tails had agreed to talk. The blue blur opened the door gently and walked inside.

Tails didn't even bother to sit up. Instead, he just lied on his bed with his back turned toward Sonic, indicating he was still mad at his blue friend.

Sonic, knowing full well how Tails acted when he was angry, kept his distance. He pulled a small stool under Tails' bed and sat down, looking at his seemingly despondent best friend. There was an awkward silence after that, for neither uttered a single word.

"So, Tails…" said Sonic after a while as he tried to break the ice and the tension that was obviously filling the air, "What have you been doing all day?"

He could see Tails flinch slightly, but he pretended not to notice. "Still as honest as always." thought Sonic as he tried to suppress a chuckle.

"Sleeping…Why?" said Tails after thinking for a while.

"Oh, nothing. I just thought you might have taken the Tornado and gone out for some fresh air, or maybe took your time sending some messages to your friends somewhere." said Sonic jokingly.

"What is it you want to talk about, Sonic?"

Sonic stopped joking immediately and looked at his best friend with the most serious face he could work up, not that Tails could see him anyway.

"Tails…I just want to say that I'm truly sorry for what I did. You were right, I was a stubborn jerk, a bad friend." Sonic stopped for a while before continuing, "I'm really, really sorry for hurting you, Tails. Could you…forgive me?"

It wasn't often somebody received an apology from Sonic the hedgehog. In fact, nobody had ever seen Sonic apologize sincerely at all, mostly due to his normally playful and sarcastic nature. Tails was pretty much the only exception.

Tails said nothing, he just lied still, not moving a muscle or doing anything that indicated he had heard Sonic's sincere apology.

"Look, Tails. I know you're still mad, and you have every right to be. You don't have to forgive me right away, or for a few days, weeks, months even, but I just want to let you know that I really am sorry for my stupidity and actions. I know how badly I hurt you, and I promise I'll never do it again. I just hope that…we can still be friends, you know…bros."

Again, Tails lied still, unmoving. Sonic sighed and stood up. He muttered "I'm really sorry" one more time before heading outside. By now, the sun had already set, and it was night time already. After all he had been through, Sonic had lost his appetite, and he didn't even feel like eating his favorite chilidog anymore.

When Sonic was about to close the door, he looked back at Tails once again.

"Goodnight, Tails. See you in the morning...little bro."

When he was about to close the door, he heard Tails' soft voice speak to him.

"See you…bro." The last word was a bit softer than the rest, but it was still loud enough for Sonic to hear.

The cobalt hedgehog's ears perked up almost immediately when he heard that last word. A happy smile formed on his face as he looked at Tails' form on the bed.

"Yeah, see you. And thank you...for everything" was all he said back before closing the door. Tails might still be angry at him for what he did, but that one word was more than enough proof that the two-tailed fox had already forgiven Sonic for his mistake.

"Everything will be back to normal tomorrow." Sonic thought gleefully as he went into his bedroom and fell onto his soft bed.

The exhausted hero slowly closed his heavy eyelids and soon drifted to a peaceful sleep. The smile that had formed on his face since he left Tails' bedroom still remained, and it remained on the speedy hedgehog's face all night long that night.

Tomorrow was going to be a new day.

THE END (for this side of the story)

* * *

_**Author's note**__: So that's it for this side of the story. Thank you very much for your time and precious comments._

_If this story turns out to be a success,** I will put up Tails' side of the same story when I have free time from school**. I have a some ideas for what was going on outside the Egg Citadel at the same time Sonic and Knuckles were going through hell inside the fortress. Also, for our favorite two-tailed genius, all hell breaks loose. _

_Anyway, thank you everybody for reading my story. Please review and tell me what you think about the story as a whole. Your opinions matter to me. Oh, and check out my other stories as well if you have time. **If able**, I'll spend some time rewriting and correcting the (numerous, actually, too many to even attempt to count, I know) mistakes in my first story "The Origin of the Unbreakable Bond" (That story was my favorite to write. Took me about a week to finish the draft). _


	11. Epilogue

**A/N: **

**I just thought I might as well put the epilogue here to complete the story on Sonic's side. It's really the same as Tails' story. If you had read the epilogue in Tails' side of the adventure, you don't need to mind this one, and vice versa. **

**Oh well, that's all I want to tell. The entire Brother's Fight story is one huge situation for me to have an excuse to gather the entire gang together and set the mood for my next project.**

**Be sure to read my notes above. Thank you for all of your support and time. Love you all.  
**

**As Arnold Schwarzenegger said, and I quote: "I'LL BE BACK".**

Epilogue

The next day, the heroic deeds of everybody involved in the worldwide crisis the day before, which the media dubbed 'The One-day War', were on the front page pages of every newspaper and every news channel around the world.

The governments, however, had to deal with the mess that was left behind by Eggman's forces and began rebuilding the destroyed cities, as well as giving final respects to those that had fallen in the war, mostly G.U.N agents.

Back in the Mystic Ruins, Tails and Sonic had already made up and were talking to each other like nothing had happened. Actually, the duo made up after Sonic gave Tails a one-hour long speech regarding the minor injury the fox had sustained in the war and how he should be careful in battle. Despite the genius' best efforts to conceal his gash, Sonic fond out from just one look, much to the kid's dismay.

* * *

After reconciling their friendship, Sonic and Tails decided to throw a party at the workshop and instantly invited everyone over to celebrate the sweet victory.

When Tails was busy with the soft drinks and cake, Sonic set up the tables and hung on the decoration.

"So Tails, did you have everything ready?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"How many people are coming anyway?"

"Well, there's Amy, Rouge, Shadow,…" said Tails as he began counting with his fingers.

"Wait, you invited Shadow? Keep him away from me; I don't ever want to have grenades for lunch."

"Yeah, it'll be fun to watch, though. That mouth of yours can get you into a lot of trouble." said Tails as frowned slightly, still remembering the event of the day before.

"Hey, I'm sorry, and I'll say sorry again and again until you forget about the whole incident." Sonic said with a stern voice, implying how serious and sincere he was being, which made Tails snicker a little.

"Yeah, I know. You always have that caring side of yours that I love and respect." said Tails as he went back to preparing the cups and drink.

Sonic smiled happily as he looked at the gold fox. The hedgehog made a mental note never to do anything that stupid ever again. He smiled to himself and continued setting the chairs and tables at a blinding speed.

"Anyway," continued Tails as he checked the list of invitees once again, "Amy, Shadow, Rouge, Knuckles, the Chaotix. Who else…I don't think the Rogues or Omega will show up. Well, that's about that. Oh, and Amy will be bringing Cream along."

"That's a lot of people" said Sonic as he whistled in amazement at the list of people.

"Well, it's a good cause for a celebration."

"Okay, then let's hurry up then. Knowing Amy, she should be here any mo…"

Before Sonic finished his sentence, the doorbell rang. Both Sonic and Tails looked at each other and chuckled at the impeccable timing.

"I'll get it" said Sonic as he headed for the door.

The blue blur quickly reached the door. The doorbell continued to ring more and more.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming," said Sonic with an annoyed tone as he opened the door, "Jeez, would it kill you to be patient, Am…"

* * *

The hedgehog never finished his sentence, as he was shocked speechless by the individual in front of him. It was not the girly pink hedgehog. Rather, it was a very familiar lavender cat dressed in a royal purple coat with white fur around the wrists.

It took a few seconds for Sonic to snap out of his initial surprise.

"B-Blaze?" asked Sonic, "What are you doing here?"

Blaze, the princess of the Sol Dimension, Guardian of the Sol Emeralds, and a close friend of Sonic, Tails and the entire gang, was standing in front of Sonic and panting breathlessly.

"S-Sonic…I need your…help" stammered the pyrokinetic cat.

As soon as she finished her sentence, Blaze fell into Sonic's hands and blacked out. At that moment, the blue blur could clearly see the nasty wounds on the cat's body. Whatever happened to her, it must have been extremely dire to make the extremely powerful and proud princess to cross dimensions and came to his house for help.

Not wasting a second, Sonic took the limp body of Blaze inside and notified Tails. After overcoming the initial shock, the twin-tailed fox cleared the couch and set her down.

* * *

"So, what happened?" asked Tails curiously as he bandaged the injured Blaze on the couch. Luckily, she suffered only flesh wounds, but some looked pretty nasty.

"I don't know, she just appeared out of nowhere and asked me for help."

"Help?"

"Yeah, I think we need to cancel the party and wait for Blaze to wake up and explain the entire situation. Since everyone is coming anyway, we can ask them to help out."

Tails only nodded and turned his attention back to the unconscious cat on the couch, whose face suggested she was being haunted by nightmares of whatever misfortune that had befallen her and her world.

* * *

It was noon when Blaze opened her eyes and groggily looked around. She noticed she was in a house, but it wasn't hers. The cat's eyes then caught sight of a blue figure, but she couldn't make out who it was due to her blurry vision.

"Hey, Blaze" said the blue figure, "Are you okay?"

She instantly recognized that voice. She squinted her eyes and looked hard at that person. Once the blurriness was gone, Blaze recognized the person instantly.

"Sonic?" What…" stammered the princess as she tried to sit up.

"You fainted in front of our house earlier this morning, don't you remember?" said another voice as that person helped her up. Blaze turned her head and recognized Tails.

"I…fainted?"

"Yeah, you were pretty beat-up and said something about needing my help." said Sonic as he recalled the incident.

At that moment, memories flooded back to Blaze and she opened her eyes wide.

"Help! Yes, I remember…My world…my world…"said Blaze frantically as she tried to state the reason for her unexpected visit.

"Please calm down, Miss Blaze," said a young and high-pitched voice, which made the cat look down and saw a cream-colored rabbit.

"Cream…"

"Please Miss Blaze. You have to calm down first, otherwise we can't understand you" continued the rabbit.

Blaze took the girl's advice and calmed her head. At that instance, she took notice of her surroundings for the first time ever since waking up. There were a lot of people in the room, and all of them were looking at her with worry clearly visible in their eyes (maybe except Shadow, he has one hell of a poker face).

The princes breathed heavily and relaxed her nerves. She then looked at Sonic once again.

"So, Blaze," began the hedgehog, "Are you okay now?"

"Yes, I am very grateful for your aid in my time of need." Blaze said with her usual formal tone, indicating that she had somewhat recovered, a sign that everybody in the room quickly noticed.

"So," began Tails, "What is it that you want Sonic to help you with?"

Blaze sat upright and took another deep breath. The lavender cat then looked at everyone in the room and began to explain her situation.

"I am currently faced with a problem beyond my powers. I need your help Sonic. This is very important to me."

Sonic simply nodded and let the cat continue.

"My world is in trouble. An unknown force has surfaced and they are threatening to tear everything apart. I tried to stop them, but these creatures were beyond my power. They defeated me in battle and escaped my clutch."

Blaze took another deep breath before continuing.

"Before the disappeared, they said something about bringing the end to all things mortal. I do not know what they meant by that, but I cannot let those dangerous monsters roam free. However, like I said, they are too much for me alone, and that is why I have come here to ask for your assistance, Sonic."

Everybody in the room stayed silent as the cat explained her situation. Some were shocked that Blaze was defeated in battle. The feline was known for her incredible speed and prowess in combat, and that someone, or something had managed to best her was surprising.

"So," said Sonic after a while, "If you have trouble, we'll gladly help, right guys?" The hedgehog turned around and asked the assembled crowd. Everybody nodded eagerly (once again, except Shadow, but he wanted to help as well) and looked at Blaze.

The princess smiled a little smile as she looked at her wonderful friends.

"So Blaze, can you tell us what these creatures are?" said Tails, "it would help a ton if we knew what we were dealing with."

Blaze looked down and crossed her arms, trying her hardest to remember the incident. After thinking for a while, the lavender cat raised her head and looked at everyone.

"Those creatures, they call themselves…**The Lords of Pandemonium.**"

…

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